56. Chris Youles - Year 5 Classroom Teacher and Author - Taipei

In this episode, I’m speaking to Chris Youles. Chris is a Classroom Teacher at Taipei European School and author of Sentence models for creative writing: A practical resource for teaching writing. Chris’ book is one of the most instantly applicable teaching books that I’ve come across in recent years and coupled with a robust grammatical understanding for students, it can really help students to understand how and why writers make certain choices in their sentence structures as well as how they can go about applying some of these techniques themselves.We discuss:1. The best text Chris has ever read, taught or been taught2. How he went about amassing all of the different sentence types in the book3. What the prerequisite grammar knowledge he would advise teaching before or alongside such structures4. The extent to which certain sentence structures genuinely create a tone, mood or impression of some sort versus purely serving as a way to add variety in expression5. How teachers might arrange such structures in a horizontal and vertical curriculum6. Where teachers should go if they want to approach the sentence construction of rhetorical, discursive or analytical writing in the same wayThanks again to Chris for researching and producing a brilliantly replete resource for teachers in Primary and Secondary alike as well as giving up some time to talk with me.If you want to be kept up to date on when educational chat like this happens, then be sure to subscribe to the podcast and/or follow me on Twitter @chrisjordanhkLinks:Chris’ book - Sentence models for creative writing: A practical resource for teaching writing.The Arrival - Shaun TanThe Writing Revolution - Natalie Wexler and Judith HochmanOn Writing - Stephen KingThe Elements of Eloquence - Mark ForsythThe Art of the Sentence - Greg KeastFirst You Write a Sentence - Joe MoranHow to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One - Stanley Fish